Archives: Topolo Menus

When Deann and I moved back from Mexico in the mid-‘80s, one of our goals was to introduce folks to both the diversity of Mexican cuisine and the splendor of Mexico City’s restaurants.  Nothing with the elegance and sophistication of San Angel Inn or Hacienda de Los Morales—the two top spots at that time— existed here, and I dreamed of creating a restaurant we could grow to match them.

Though I was still quite an inexperienced chef when we opened Topolo in 1989, my first menus explored many of Mexico’s classic seafood dishes—the ones I’d written about in my first cookbook—through a fine-dining lens.  And in the starters of those opening menus, I always included Caesar salad.  Yes, it was invented in Tijuana, but I included it to offer comfort for those for whom the rest of the menu might be a challenge.

Times have certainly changed, and Topolo has gone through many iterations and garnered many awards, including restaurant of the year from the James Beard Foundation and 13 years of Michelin stars. Topolo chef de cuisine Meagan O’Connor has poured over three decades of changing menus and culled these gems—seen anew through 2025 eyes—to represent our greatest milestones. We’ve even included a nod to Topolo’s most unusual iteration—during COVID—when we packed up the dinner’s mise en place and armed our guests will a how-to video for finishing each course at home.

Maybe I went too far with the title for this menu. Oaxacans don’t traditionally do a single holiday feast of the seven moles.  They leave that seven-dish extravaganza to the Italian-Americans and their fishy festivity.

But, still, serving mole at any time does spell festivity and Oaxaca does festivity better than anywhere else in Mexico.  So, since my family and I have spent over three decades celebrating the holidays in Oaxaca, I thought it was perfect to offer a menu at this special time of year that features Oaxaca’s famous seven moles—some in traditional presentations, some in ways that will be new to you.

We’re taking you beyond Oaxaca City’s renowned cuisine to the special preparations of towns—large and small— throughout the state.   From Puerto Escondido and their herby, light-green fish mole to the richly spiced black mole of the central valleys, from the Northern Sierra’s red mole studded with tender pozole to a coloradito I learned from a Zapotec cook in Juchitán in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.  Come taste the unparalleled diversity Oaxaca offers us!

I know the royal court had a separate kitchen just to prepare the special corn for the emperor’s tortillas and tamales, and to simmer the black (and red and tan) beans for his daily breakfast.  I’m sure there was another kitchen for handling the ceremonial chocolate drink perfumed with vanilla.  The aroma there must have been incredible. 

Though these ingredients are now common the world over, I can’t imagine what it would be like to have tasted them for the first time, as those European mercenaries did at the emperor’s elegant banquet table.

We invite you to adopt a beginners mind, open your taste buds anew and experience Mexico’s Gifts to the world.

The starting point: Pretty much every dish Mexican cooks know how to make—from simple seafood to
wild game in a complex mole—can be scooped into a tortilla and eaten out of hand. And those tortillas, though made mostly of corn, can be nearly as wide ranging as the fillings. All of which means that tacos are probably more varied and special that you may have imagined.

Early one day in the beginning of 2024, the Topolo team (who have eaten tacos all over Mexico) devoted a concentrated 12 hours in Mexico City to tracking down 13 off-the-tourist-track taquerias and eating 35 of their specialties. It is from that legendary CDMX taco crawl that this menu has grown.

In Mexico, tacos come in a dozen or so categories, some of which you’ll recognize (tacos de carne asada, perhaps), while others (like tacos de guisados or a la plancha) may be new to you. As you adventure through Mexico City with us, we’ll ensure you get to meet some new friends.